The Church's Blind SpotChurch Silence Promotes Violence: An Article Series From All-Creatures.org

Church silence promotes violence to humans, to animals, to our
environment, to our economy, to our education, to our finances, and to our health.
By: Mary T. and Frank L. Hoffman

By Hugh MacDonald

Across the ages, the Church, in all its branches, has had many “blind
spots”. How many centuries passed with most Christians seeing nothing wrong
with war, slavery, child exploitation, capital punishment, the burning of
witches, the use of torture, the subjugation of women, the persecution of
heretics, the denigration of aboriginal peoples, the abuse of homosexuals,
the pursuit of war, the destruction of the environment? Indeed, when brave
reformers within and without the Church first cried out against these evils,
the Church more often than not rejected their protests as extreme, foolish,
fanatical, misguided! Despite its claims otherwise, the official Church has
often dragged its feet in the struggles against evil.

Doubtless, we are still blind to many other issues which have not yet
been recognized and named as the horrors they are. One such evil is so
glaring, so terrible, so obvious that we have no excuse for our silence and
complacency; indeed, that fact that the Church (in all its denominations)
accepts this wrong and says nothing is utterly disillusioning. It is the
reason that, after a half-century of ministry, my conscience is pushing me
to leave the Church. Scores of people have told me that it is the reason
they have dismissed Christianity as hypocritical. It is there all the time,
daily before our eyes. We know about it. Like the three monkeys, however, we
choose not to see, hear, or speak about this evil.

Humankind’s cruelty to animals is the great evil about which the Church
today says nothing! Many denominations pride themselves on championing
“women’s rights”, “children’s rights”, “aboriginal rights”, “gay rights”;
but they say never a word about “animals’ rights”. In our own homes, most
Christians consider ourselves to be humane people: we pamper our dogs and
cats with every luxury, but we and our churches turn a blind eye to the
horrors which we allow to be inflicted on helpless sentient creatures who
suffer just as deeply as do we (and with most of that suffering at human
hands.) As Dean Inge observed, “If animals had a theology, we human beings
would be their devil” -- and yet the Churches say nothing!

Consider the horrors of factory farming with tens of millions of animals
raised in huge` barns, often crowded together in filthy conditions, many
never once seeing grass or sky, living in metal pens so small that they
cannot turn around. (If slaughter houses had glass walls, many of us would
never eat meat again!) Undercover videos show many animals, not unconscious
but only half-stunned, being butchered or thrown into boiling water while
still alive! The production of veal and pate-de-foie grasse is cruel beyond
description. All of this is common knowledge. It has been repeatedly
confirmed by investigative reporting. Yet the Churches say nothing!

Turn to the abuse of animals in so-called “sport”. In the Spanish world,
it is considered entertaining to watch a magnificent bull, maddened by
previous torture, his vision blurred by petroleum jelly, his horns shortened
so that he cannot defend himself, his shoulder muscles cut by short spears
so that he cannot raise his head, then teased and tormented for twenty
minutes before a “brave” matador puts him out of his hell. Think of the
fox-hunting, so much admired by English fops who enjoy putting a pack of
forty hounds on the trail of a frightened fox who will be torn apart --
great sport which although now illegal is still admired even by members of
the Royal Family. Attend the rodeos and watch as calves get their necks
broken when lassos are yanked too hard. Go to the races, track or chuckwagon,
and brush aside the fact that scores of beautiful horses break their legs
and must be destroyed each year as part of this “sport of kings”. Support
the circuses where tigers and elephants are forced with whips and electric
prods to perform silly and unnatural acts so that we may be amused. Or,
consider our personal involvement as we teach children that it doesn’t
matter how much the worms or minnows suffer on their hooks so long as people
have the pleasure of tricking, catching, “playing”, and finally killing
small and terrified reptiles! Yet the Churches say nothing!

The list of horrors is endless: the use of animals in experiments is
another whole field of scandalous horror -- in cosmetic laboratories,
rabbits are blinded as hair sprays are shot directly into their eyes; in
military labs, pigs are shot and brutally wounded without anaesthetic (but
not killed) so that medics can practice their skills; in pharmaceutical
labs, dogs and cats are fed deliberate overdoses of poisonous drugs to test
their noxious dangers; in medical labs, our first cousins, chimpanzees, are
subjected to all kinds of sadistic experimentation much of which is not
intended for anything more than to satisfy scientific curiosity. In
secondary schools, frogs and small mammals are killed dissected in biology
lessons even though computer programs can illustrate and teach the lessons
of the body far more effectively. Yet the Churches say nothing!

When did anyone ever hear a minister or a priest preach against such
evils? When did a denomination ever issue an encyclical or even a directive
on the need for humane treatment of animals? Our little children are taught
to sing that “God sees the little sparrow fall,” “that God made all
creatures great and small.” Lofty prayers are addressed to the
“All-Merciful, All-Compassionate and Loving Creator.” Clergy content
themselves with making non-offensive statements from their pulpits about
humankind being the stewards of nature and it being our mission to be
ecologically responsible! What sham! What hypocrisy! What cowardice!

What are the reasons for our silence? Because the suffering of creatures
is not worthy of our concern? Because we fear that our speaking about animal
suffering might detract from concern about human suffering? Because we are
afraid of a backlash from the meatpacking industry and the poultry farms?
Because we don’t want to offend the many men in our congregations who think
it is great sport to kill animals, birds, and fish? Because we think that
God has given us dominion over animals so that we have the right to use them
and abuse them however we please? Or is it that we are just so immersed in
the culture of cruelty that we, ourselves, are deadened to its evils, too
bored to care?

Whatever the reason, our silence is shameful and evil, a denial of God’s
love, a denial of our stewardship. Albert Schweitzer surely spoke for the
best in all religious traditions when he wrote, ““Persons are truly ethical
only when they obey the compulsion to help all life which they are able to
assist and shrink from injuring anything that lives.” By that standard, the
Christian Church today is blind and mute and unethical to an extreme.
Centuries from now, future generations will be asking about our
indifference, even as we today say about witch-burning, torture, and
slavery, “How could self-professing Christians have stood by and said
nothing, done nothing?”

The intent of this series is to wake up and
encourage the Church to greater works of love and compassion (John 14:12).
It is not to condemn the Church, in general, or any individual, any more than
Jesus condemned the woman caught in adultery. Jesus said to her, "...go
your way. From now on sin no more." (John 8:11) And this is our
message to the Church: Recognize our sins of the past and go forth seeking
to be perfect as our heavenly Father is perfect (Matthew 5:48), correcting the
sins of the past, for that is the only way we can truly show the world that we
love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, might, and mind, including the
whole of creation, which includes our neighbors whom we are to love as ourselves.

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